Preserve plunder

By Sherine Nasr
Wadi Digla is Egypt's newest natural protectorate. Designated as a nature preserve two years ago by the Ministry for Environmental Affairs, it is home to unique animal, bird and plant life, as well as magnificent rock formations and fossilised wood found to date back 60 million years. A 10-minute drive east of the Cairo suburb of Maadi, Wadi Digla is a 30-kilometre stretch of the Eastern Desert. Originally a waterbed, floodwaters once made their way through here from the Nile to what is now the Gulf of Suez. Today, the wadi (a ravine or valley) is also home to mounds of garbage imported from Cairo dumps. Pigsties and high-pollution enterprises have also been set up within the protectorate's borders, angering conservationists and invoking the wrath of international environmental watchdogs.
Alarmed by the evident danger posed to wildlife in the area, the World Conservation Union (IUNC) -- the second most important environmental agency worldwide after the Switzerland-based UNEP -- sent an official letter to President Hosni Mubarak last month, calling for an immediate end to polluting activities within the protectorate. In the letter, Maritta Von Bieberstein, director general of the IUNC, wrote: "It has recently been noted that -- without public announcement, warning or permission -- the Wadi Digla protectorate has been targeted to become a major garbage dump, as well as a relocation site of many of Cairo's most polluting industries. The Tree Lovers Association, along with many other environmental associations in Egypt, are concerned about the environmental effects such an action could cause and believe that the activities planned are incompatible with the status of Wadi Digla as a protected area."
Locally, action has been spearheaded by the Tree Lovers Association (TLA), who in January 1999 successfully lobbied the Ministry for Environmental Affairs to declare Wadi Digla a protected area -- Egypt's 21st. "It is a unique, open-air museum of a fragile desert ecosystem hosting numerous endangered species," says Asmaa El-Halwagi, a TLA board member. But naming the area as a nature reserve proved to be only a small victory. Lack of coordination between various government bodies has resulted in the glaringly evident failure to actually protect the status of the area. Over the past few months, the protectorate's boundaries have been redrawn several times in a thinly veiled attempt to skirt blame for polluting the area.
Nature lovers have long known Wadi Digla as a place for trekking, camping and day trips. All this could soon come to an end with a recent, unannounced decision by the Cairo governorate to give permission to the garbage collectors community in the neighbouring working class district of Manshiyet Nasser to set up a large garbage dump in the area. "Two kilometres have been sliced off the east end of the wadi in the area known as Wadi El-Murr to operate this dump, constituting a major threat to the natural resources of the area," explained El-Halwagi. The decision not only sanctions the dumping of garbage in the supposed protected area, but also opens the door to attendant polluting activities related to garbage collection, like the raising of pigs (pigsties have already been set up in the area). At the time the governorate took its decision, officials were unaware that the site they had selected had already been proclaimed a natural protectorate. "This is one extravagant example of how lack of coordination among different governmental authorities can cause damage to our natural heritage," says TLA member Samia Zaytoun.
But it's not the first time Wadi Digla has had to fend off the garbage collectors. In the late 1980s, a similar decision was taken by then Cairo governor Omar Abdel-Akher, who chose to relocate the Torah garbage collectors community to what was then identified as the "Wadi Digla desert area." The community was again relocated, with the help of the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE), to its current location, which lies inside the "buffer zone" of the protectorate. The string of relocations stems from Egyptian law, which forbids the processing of garbage in residential areas. Far-flung sites are allocated for the collection, sorting and dumping of garbage. Torah and Manshiyet Nasser were chosen to host these activities some 30 years ago, when the areas were deep in the desert and far from any residential areas. But over time, new populations encroached on both areas and because they are now heavily populated, the garbage facilities need to be moved again. Ayman Moharram, general manager of Qattamiya Recycling Centre and Torah Upgrading Projects, a subsidiary project of APE, explained that the next elected site was the Wadi Digla desert site overlooking Qattamiya, along the Ain Sokhna road.
APE has worked to upgrade the Torah garbage collectors community, whose activities are now based in Wadi Digla, and provide efficient and more environmentally friendly ways of storing, sorting and recycling garbage. Among the activities APE sponsors are a compost plant, zabbalin pigsties, a sorting unit, related workshops and a first aid unit. To encourage APE's efforts, the governorate recently allocated them four feddans of land as a dumping site. The catch: the land is inside the protectorate boundaries. And although the NGO's work is highly commended in the field of development, this does not alter the fact that the organisation is directly involved in polluting a natural protectorate.
"Our buildings and activities are located outside the official boundaries of the protectorate," says APE's Moharram. "Besides, they are all environmentally-friendly activities." APE chairwoman Yusria Loza notes that the site was not their choice -- they are only trying to improve what is there. "We did not select this site. Rather, a dozen official approvals from different authorities had to be issued before the land was handed over to the association." Then, to corroborate they are still the good guys, Loza adds: "Yet, we are ready to move our activities from the area if the law so says."
The 1983 law that governs natural protectorates (Law No. 102) forbids any activities, works or experiments from being carried out inside the buffer zone of a natural protectorate unless permission is granted by the appropriate administrative body. Until this law is clarified in a way that indicates who has the final say regarding protectorate areas, the site will continue to receive some 250 tons of garbage -- 85 per cent of which is only being sorted, not recycled. "Complete recycling is included in our future plans," explains Moharram. "However, the Cairo governor is now studying the possibility of moving this dump site."
Garbage is not all environmental activists are worried about. A seven-kilometre asphalt road into the protectorate was recently paved, bringing with it a wide range of various polluting activities, such as an unlicensed asphalt mixer and numerous limestone workshops. Use of dynamite in mining activities threatens to devastate the wadi's precious rock hills. To add insult to injury, the Cairo Bus Transport Authority has also set up a huge spare-parts store. Officials at the Cairo governorate were initially elusive as to what measures they will take to address the issue of the protected area. The immediate reaction was to shift previously approved boundaries so that polluting activities would officially be located outside the protectorate. More serious action, however, was promised last week, when the governorate reportedly took a decision to remove all polluting activities from inside the protectorate.
The move was welcomed by environmental agencies. "It is good to take such a decision. How it will be carried out and when, is what we really want to know," said TLA's El-Halwagi.
Leaving nothing to chance, the TLA is currently filing lawsuits against the prime minister, the Ministry for Environmental Affairs, the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), Cairo governorate, the APE and the other violators of the protectorate. "The aim is to acquire a court verdict to remove all these activities from inside Wadi Digla," said El-Halwagi.
"Wadi Digla is part of our natural heritage," El-Halwagi asserts. "We should protect it, not destroy it."
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